When Olympus boss Michael Woodford learnt about a $1.7bn fraud at the Japanese camera giant, he didn’t think for a second he would be fired. Then he set out to expose the truth . . .

It was high summer when the email arrived. It lay there quiet and unattended.
In July of 2011 Europe sweltered in the grip of an unusual heatwave. I was
travelling, as so often, chairing meetings in Hamburg, the German city where
Olympus has its European headquarters.

Now I was president of the entire company, and the deference I was newly
accorded was palpable; a novelty which nevertheless prompted a slight sense
of unease.

I got back to my hotel room and flipped open my laptop. The email’s subject
read: Urgent news. A friend in Tokyo, Goro, had read an article in an
obscure Japanese magazine called Facta. It contained wild allegations about
Olympus. I had never heard of Facta, but I later discovered that it was a
small business title run by a maverick, a rare phenomenon among Japanese
media: a campaigning journalist.